Most of us use the web to look for information and with the amount of information available online these days, it seems that we can find almost anything as long as we know how to search for it. The problem is, one piece of information often leads to another and following those leads often distracts us from what we were looking for in the first place.

It would be nice if we could take a look at those additional information sources while still anchored to the story that we originally searched for. Thanks to Snapify, you can. This Chrome extension will help you summon more resources about specific information online without leaving the page you are currently on.

Select & Snap

First, visit Snapify’s Chrome extension page and click the install button. You can tell Snapify has been installed by looking at the icon on the toolbar next to the URL box. If the icon is colorful, it means that Snapify is active, while a grey tone indicates that the extension is inactive. You can activate or deactivate the extension by clicking on the icon.

After activating the extension, you can use Snapify by selecting any text on any webpage. A blue “Snap It!” button will appear near the selected text. Clicking this button will open a pop-under window with more information about that specific word.

However, you can only use Snapify on fully loaded webpages. If the page is still loading, the Snapify button won’t appear next to your selection. So wait another few seconds until the page has fully loaded.

Snapify will try to give you the most logical results of your search. So if you select a word, you would most likely get the definition of that word. Other than the default search result, you can get more refined results by selecting one of the search sources on the left side of the window.

For example, I tried to look up “Refurbished“, then I clicked on the YouTube icon in the result window. The result is refreshed with videos about refurbished items, such as unboxing a refurbished MacBook.

If you are a Wikipedia lover, Snapify gives you quicker access to the tool – as Wikipedia is the first entry in the search results.

Another possible use of Snapify is to look for additional information about a person. When you read an interesting article on the net and want to find out more about the person who wrote it, just select the name and let Snapify do the rest. You can find more articles from the person, their other blog(s), and maybe even the location of their home on a map.

When you want to follow up on one of the results, just click on the link and the page will be opened on the same pop-under window. But there’s also the option to open the result in a new tab if you want to. You can also “like” the page on Facebook and/or share it via Twitter.

Diving Into The Options

There’s a little bit of customization you can do with Snapify from the options window. To access it, go to the “Window – Extensions” menu.

Then scroll down to the Snapify entry and click the “Options” link.

Within the window, you can enable or disable external links, native browsing, and images detection. Click on the green checkmarks to change the preferences.

You can also “blacklist” some sites so Snapify will not work within those sites. To add sites to the list, click on the “Add site exceptions” tab, type the address in the URL field and click Enter. Repeat the process to add another one.

You can easily remove a site from the list by clicking on the red “Remove Exception” link.

If you do a lot of searching and researching on the web, Snapify is a small useful extension which will save you several steps. Try it out and tell us what you think about it in the comments below.